Dust to Dust
by Sorceress Eiva
Summary: A look at the history of Oerba after the original attempt to bring down Cocoon, from another's eyes. Spoilers if you haven't reached Oerba, I guess. Short POV drabble-chapters.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: Disclaimer. I don't own FFXIII or anything within, blah blah blah. For not liking the game as much as I'd expected to, it was still pretty decent, I guess - a good waste of 60 hours, anyway. :D Aaaaaanyway have a short drabbly-type fic, because I freaking loved running around Oerba, and the music played in it was one of the best parts of the entire game. Enjoy, reviews, criticisms and concrit all appreciated._

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I knew Vanille from a very young age. Her mother was in the hospice to give my mum support while she gave birth to me - we grew up being close. Even if we hadn't already known each other, I think we would have ended up being friends anyway. I was one of two? three? from our clan that had dark hair and dark eyes, although I had Dia's naturally pale skin; growing up I was teased a lot. Vanille stood up for me.

We watched each other grow up: played together, lived together, fought together. The women of Oerba's different clans did different things depending on tradition and leadership, and we hadn't changed for almost the entire recorded existence of our own - the girls gathered vegetables, and cooked, and washed, and in our spare time, hunted whatever we were physically able.

Back when bears still roamed the area, we stalked and took a particularly large one down; myself, Vanille and a few others. We all took a square of pelt to commemorate our first big kill, and boasted for weeks - I slept with mine, finding it warm and comfortable. Vanille wore hers, not particularly caring when it became stained and worn in areas.

Life was tough, but bearable, because we had each other. And besides, it had been like this for hundreds of years.


	2. Chapter 2

Clans lived separately, but there was nothing to stop them conversing. As in any culture, there were friendships and rivalries all over Gran Pulse, but Oerba was a relatively neutral zone. The buildings around our patch of land were inhabited by those from the Yun clan. The men - and women - were broad-shouldered and strong-willed, with much darker skin than ours.

One girl that used to play with us was Fang, who was particularly fierce, but had a soft heart underneath. She had Vanille had a strong relationship and often went out hunting together, coming back with some kind of beast's hide more often than not.

One day they returned looking ashen-faced, and showed us their brands. Not too long after this, and after we had all said our somewhat tearful goodbyes, they left. I wanted to scream at them, _no!,_ but their minds were made up, and they weren't the first to be turned into l'Cie. Not by a long shot.

We watched them transform and try to pull Cocoon, that hated orb suspended so low in the sky you could almost touch it, down from its lofty perch. We watched as that dark skinned, iron-willed woman tore through its surface and our own pale beauty helped in the attempt to destroy those up above. We watched as those terrifying forms fell from the sky, change back into the girls we'd grown up with, and with one short but blinding flash breathed no longer, twinkling in the sunlight.

We moved them to the vestige later that day.


	3. Chapter 3

For a long time after that, the overall mood in Oerba was tense and uncertain. I visited my friend and almost-sister once; wandered about the cool corridors until I found them. It was like nothing I'd even experienced before - I'd seen people turned to crystal before, but it had never been anyone very close to me. I pressed my hands against the frozen ones of Vanille, and wished she would wake up.

Not long after that, we awoke to find the vestige gone, and our resident Fal'Cie with it. More than anything, I remember a tall, dark-skinned woman screaming and having to be held back by several others, angry tears streaming down her face. This was Fang's mother, who was a good cook and a friendly woman who wasn't afraid of clouting an overly inquisitive child; she had been close with her daughter, and the idea that she would never see the crystalline form again was crushing for her. Someone found her body swinging from a rope only a week after they were moved, and we never spoke of the incident again.

I'm not sure why those artifacts were moved, much less where to. In some ways it was a blessing - with no Fal'Cie living on our doorstep, we were less likely to be turned into l'Cie ourselves, and there was a noticeable change in the way Oerba's populace behaved. However, we knew it would only be a matter of time until the land became impossible to cultivate - Anima made our lands more fertile, and without it we'd have to move to another village. A change might have been good. Seeing Cocoon looming over us every morning with one chunk missing was a painful thing to wake up to.


	4. Chapter 4

Oerba only lasted a couple of months before the clans living there began to drift apart. For being so physically strong, the Yuns didn't have the same emotional strength; they fought a lot, and eventually they all split up. Most of them moved out of the village - some to an unfortunate death at the claws of an enraged behemoth, others to the bustling village of Paddra, a good week away from our home. Us Dias and the other two clans remained where we had been based for centuries, but a lot of people chose to work most of the days away in the Mah'habara mines. It was something to do to take their minds off what could only be described as the destruction of our small village.

And slowly, week by week, less people were returning to sleep each night. Working in the mines held more than one danger - as well as the risk of cave-ins and all the other natural disasters, the Fal'Cie there dropped into a habit of branding the workers with those cursed marks. From what I could gather, having never travelled further than Sulyya, more l'Cie than humans were wandering the fields of Gran Pulse, and if the rate of conversion continued like this, only crystals - or Cie'th - would remain of us. It wasn't even a big thing anymore - people just left the village to complete their Focus, sometimes telling us where they were going and other times not, and never returned. After the attempt to destroy the floating world all the time ago, no-one was given particularly taxing Focuses to complete, but they were doled out regularly all the same.

And then it happened. It happened to me. I was too near the gigantic tower that we could see from home, I guess, and the Fal'Cie there took offense to my presence. I woke up on the floor, thankfully hidden from the prowling monsters, with a vague idea of having some task to complete. I don't know what it was - some kind of four-legged beast, something with sharp teeth and quick reflexes. Something I could never hope to kill by myself. I was never much of a hunter, could only ever do it with others.

I thought of the time when we brought the bear down, and wished life could go back to the way it used to be.


	5. Chapter 5

I had never imagined I would see them again, still wearing the clothes they'd had on when they departed to complete their Focus. They weren't alone; accompanying them were four others, all strange looking. If I hadn't witnessed the slow destruction of the human population of Gran Pulse - hadn't known that there was no civilization left - I wouldn't have known which clan they might belong to. One of the men had skin darker than anything I'd ever seen before, and the child with them had hair the colour of the moon.

I wanted to run to Vanille and hug her. Wanted to ask her how she'd escaped her crystal prison; where she'd been moved to; who these strangers were; what she was doing back in Oerba. But I couldn't. Five hundred years of shambling about as some misshapen Cie'th had robbed me of proper intelligence and the ability to act human, and all I could do was lumber toward them, wailing through my decayed vocal cords. There was no flash of recognition in her eyes; I hadn't expected there to be. All six of them rallied against me, an unlikely group that somehow fit this dead world.

Peace found me at the same time as Fang's spear. It hit me full through what used to be my chest, and my life ended. I fancied that I turned human again before I hit the floor and that the people I knew held a moment of silence for me before continuing their journey to do - what exactly, I don't know.

Just seeing them was good enough.


End file.
